Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch

by Rivka Galchen

Some people worry about being born under an unlucky star. I don’t. I worry about being born in an unlucky place.

The greedy misuse the world by striving to acquire it, said Martin Luther.

“Some birds build their own nests and raise their own baby birds, but cuckoo birds take the nests of others and knock out the better eggs.”

But how has Mama, who has been a hardworking widow for so many years, who has been so generous to so many—how has she been so viciously turned on? It made no sense to me. It was more perplexing than planets. But living again with you here, I remember. I understand. I’m not surprised.”

If instead of asking about Saturn’s rising, people looked at their own wheat fields. If they stopped digging up the white asparagus too early. If they knew better how to clean mushrooms.

Hans is against baths and thinks they breed disease. He’s bothered by water generally. It opens the pores, that’s how the illness gets in—that is his thinking.

You’re right that we have to see the good in people, at least in people who have power over us and who will be angry if we see them in another way.

As the miles passed, I began to wonder if maybe it was simply that Katharina couldn’t be bothered to convict me. That she was too morally exhausted.